Electronic mail programs are used by business and residential users to communicate information contained within the body of an electronic mail message or attached as an electronic file or document to the electronic mail message. For example, a user can save a business report as an electronic document prepared by a word processing program and attach this electronic document to an e-mail message for distribution to designated recipients. Another representative example is the transmission of an electronic mail message having an attached multi-media presentation file, such as a Microsoft “POWERPOINT” slide show, to designated recipients at physically remote locations. Users of electronic mail programs commonly use electronic mail messages as a carrier mechanism for forwarding electronic files or documents via a computer network to one or more designated recipients.
Although the combination of an electronic mail program and a distributed computer network provides an efficient communication system for communicating with multiple parties, the capacity of this electronic mail system to support communications can be degraded by the transfer of messages having large-sized attachments. Electronic mail users observe this degradation of electronic mail system performance as a delay in completing the transmission or reception of a message having a large file attachment. This is especially evident when accessing electronic mail remotely over low speed modem connections. Also, system administrators view the exchange of attached electronic files via the electronic mail system as a storage capacity issue because communication of these large file attachments requires electronic mail servers having sufficient capacity to store both messages and attachments for system users.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for providing the recipient of an electronic mail message with the ability to access electronic content without forwarding this content as an attached file or document of an electronic mail message. There is a further need for communicating the content of a large electronic file or document to a remote recipient without forwarding the entire content as an attachment to an electronic mail message. The present invention solves these and other needs of the prior art by publishing content at a web site viewable by an electronic mail recipient in response to accessing an attached file of an electronic mail message transmitted to that recipient.